Just shy of 10 years later, the announcement of President Obama on Wednesday night, that he is starting the withdrawal of long-anticipated Afghanistan marks one more step in the gradual reversal of that calculation. Although the President could not say so directly, one of the restrictions on America's retreat from a decade of hard and bloody is the recognition that, more than ever, the United States will be counting on help from Afghanistan to deal with emerging threats from Pakistan.
The Government argues that the killing of osama bin Laden last month in its deep composed within Pakistan, combined with scores of other counterterrorism strikes, given greater leeway to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan. Still angry reaction from Pakistan to that raid also makes it more urgent than ever that the United States maintain websites outside the country to launch drone attacks and commando against militant networks that remain in Pakistan and to make sure that the fast-growing nuclear arsenal of Pakistan never falls into the wrong hands.
What raid of Abbottabad, Pakistan, Bin Laden "demonstrated more alive than ever before is that we need a base for attacking targets in Pakistan, and the geography is simple: you need to do this than Afghanistan," said Bruce Reidel, a CIA ex-official, who conducted the first review of Mr. Obama of strategy in the region.
As such, there are two reasons American planners expect to negotiate with the Government of President hamid karzai , an agreement to keep upwards of 25,000 American forces in Afghanistan, even after the troops of 30,000 "surge" are withdrawn within the next 14 months and tens of thousands of more until the end of 2014.
The first is to ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a base for attacks against the United States. But the reason most urgent is Pakistan. In his speech, Mr. Obama has invited Pakistan to expand its peaceful cooperation in the region, but he also noted that Pakistan should fulfil its commitments and that "the United States never tolerate a refuge for those who would destroy us."
Pakistan has already made clear, however, that he will never allow American forces to be based there. As they returned more hostile relations with the United States in recent months, he refused to issue visas to a large number of CIA agents and seems to be moving quickly close American tinnitus Shamsi base, Pakistan.
In turn, administration officials make it clearer than ever that view from Pakistan sheltering terrorist groups as the most pressing problem. "We don't see a transnational threat that comes out of Afghanistan," a senior administration official said Wednesday in briefing reporters before the speech of the President. Later, he added, "the threat came from Pakistan."
These realities put increasing pressure on Obama administration officials to secure some long-term success of the war in Afghanistan. This is not guaranteed. How to leave the bulk of international forces, the country still can descend into civil war and chaos.
Indeed, several senior administration officials have acknowledged in recent days that the announcement made by Mr. Obama simply put the best face possible on a three-year plan to withdraw from what was once an expansive experiment in nation building.
The fundamental goal now will be a minute — work of combating terrorism to stop Al Qaeda — that is far more closely to the mission that the Vice President Joseph r. Biden Jr. and some White House political advisers argued during 18 months ago. With the announcement Wednesday, President Obama has indicated that he has advanced slowly toward that point of view too.
"The most difficult over the coming years will be proving Afghans that there is something in this for them," said Mr. Reidel.
This is particularly difficult because the Afghans and can draw the prime-time speech of Mr. Obama is that Americans are leaving again — just as they did after the Soviet Union gave up its war in 1989 —, but this time more slowly.
In the last decade, Afghans have heard many promises of Washington. Months after ordering the invasion that ousted the Taliban Government, President George w. Bush declared that the United States can start a new Marshall plan for Afghanistan; He never fully materialized.
In 2009 Mr. Obama spoke of a "civilian surge" of "agricultural experts and educators, engineers and lawyers" who would train Afghans how to create a modern country. The results have been limited, and Mr. Obama never mentioned these goals in a speech Wednesday night.
Administration officials insist that efforts will continue despite the withdrawal. Even after all the "outbreak" forces to return home, there will still be 68,000 American troops on the ground next year — more than twice the number who were in Afghanistan the day Mr. Obama took office.
But over time, the counterterrorism mission will require fewer troops in the region, administration officials said.
"When we think about Al Qaeda and talk about them in Afghanistan, we say that it is 50 or 75 people who are really there as combatants, and mainly are embedded within units Haqqani," a senior administration official said in an interview last week, referring to a militant network based in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
The official made clear that the main focus of the Administration was now a much larger and more dangerous, the remaining rebels in Pakistan.
The essence of the decision of Mr. Obama is to accelerate what is working — no matter how loudly the Pakistanis protest drone strikes and violation of its sovereignty.
Over the past few weeks, officials have used this same logic to justify a more pronounced reduction of forces in Afghanistan.
"What they are doing, of course, is changing the metrics of success," said David Rothkopf, who wrote a story the leader of National Security Council, which led the effort Mr. Obama to restrict the targets in Afghanistan — and focus again on counterterrorism strikes inside Pakistan.
"It was just a few years ago that we discussed how long it would take to train Afghan forces to take the lead in protecting the parties contested the most violent country," he added. "Or how long it would take to build schools and courts, and provision of basic services. Nobody wants to talk about this more — the timelines are longer and larger costs that the policy here at home will have. "
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